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Feature:Zeal, Advocacy, and the Future of Linux
Zeal, Advocacy, and the Future of Linux The future of Linux in the computing world, now so centralized around the Internet, worries me.
It REALLY worries me.
What worries me, specifically, is the light that Linux is being put in because of very bad advocacy. Anti-advocacy, almost, from those who claim to love and support it the most. Rude, insulting, and obscene attacks fly out of the "mouths" of these people to anyone who speaks one thing about Linux that doesn't put it into an immaculate light. Never before has the ordinary, everyday user had such a voice in the software industry. In this Internet-centralized computing world, the everyday advocacy by the average user can have huge ramifications on how Linux is presented to the world.
Everyone remembers the Amiga, OS/2, the BeBox. For their times, they were technologically superior to the Intel/Microsoft framework that dominated. Their (relative) failures to reach a substantial portion of the marketplace cannot be narrowed down to one cause, but among the many, advocacy was definitely a poignant one. A defensive and often rude greater-than-thou attitude without addressing the shortcomings of their products pushed away possible supporters and hurt their chances of widespread support. Rumors, myths, and speculation ("The Amiga is just a game machine! It couldn't possibly by used for any productive task.") became widespread. An inability to dispel this hearsay through supportive, informative, and polite advocacy implied that it was _not_ unsubstantiated, regardless of how untrue it really was. As
members of this open source community and supporters of our projects and ideals, it is important to correct erroneous reports and dispel FUD[1] directed at us, but it must be done in a polite and professional manner. WE are the spokespeople for our community, for our ideals, and for our projects. There is no PR department in the open source community that can sugar coat our feelings and statements. Some of our most vocal proponents, such as ESR, RMS, and Linus, have somewhat taken on this responsibility, but even they are flamed and criticized. Without politeness, professionalism, and pride we will dig ourselves into a hole that we may not be able to get out of. And the shovels have already broken ground. Take, for example, the posting of the EXTREMELY embarrassing comments directed at Mindcraft regarding their Linux vs. NT benchmarks[2]. Want more dirt? After an article[3] by Jack Bryar from the Andover News Network that he himself admitted was hasty ex post facto was posted to Slashdot[4], he was flooded with hateful email telling him hundreds of different places to stick it. Was the article appropriate? Certainly not from our point of view, but many readers courteously and meticulously described the errors in his article, much to his delight. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the proper way to handle with this situation, not with obscenities. Fortunately, in his response article[5], he put the flames in a much better light than anyone could reasonably expect. This is not a slam on the Slashdot folk; it is a problem that the entire community suffers from. Nobody is perfect, obviously, but please give thought before you shoot off an email like the ones mentioned. There ARE real people with real feelings on the other end and many times they have a valid point.
You are all ambassadors for the open source community whether you like it or not. You don't want to be ostracized and called "rabid fanatics" or "zealots" by the rest of the world. It defeats our purpose and will ultimately doom us. Advocate Linux. Advocate open source. Don't put down competitors. Despite what some of you may think, many in (and perhaps most of) the community do NOT believe that Microsoft is the enemy and the evil corporation that we must kill. Rather than narrowing in on destroying Microsoft, focus on this: improving the software. And if you can't code, there is still much more you can do: dispel the rumors, the myths, the speculation, the FUD. Test the programs that these people write, offer well-thought suggestions, report bugs. Many coders aren't good writers and their programs need documentation. Offer to help them with it or join the Linux Documentation Project if that's a strength. The programmers are only a part of making this thing work, although the most glorified in this community. But they simply can't do it alone.
[1] Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
[2] Linux Net Rage
[3] Article 1
[4] Slashdot
[5] Response to article 1
Suggested reading:
Linux Advocacy HOWTO (part of the Linux Documentation Project). Paul L. Rogers.
"Thoughts from the Furnace." Rob Malda. Article and user comments.
Regarding "The Charity Case for Red Hat." Frank de Lange. (Author's side note: at the time of writing, the first listed user comment is EXACTLY what I am talking about. From an "Anonymous Coward" on Slashdot: "A good reply but the original article was such a vapid pile of unresearched dogsh*t as not to even garner a reply.")
"Rebuttal to `The Charity Case for Red Hat.'" Dale Merrick.
Comments on "Andover News, the sequel: A Well Braziered Bryar" on Slashdot. Frank de Lange. Article and user comments (particularly from Lemmy Caution, mastagee, Skyshadow, x mani x, and more.)
They are NOT overstated. I know quite a few people who gave up on Linux (myself included) due to the massive amount of sh!t they recieved asking "beginner" questions in the newsgroups, or from being attacked as either Windoze FUD-slingers or idiots when they make (valid) complaints about the fact that Linux is NOT as easy to use as many say it is (not all of us know much (if anything) about Unix).
Unlike some of these attacked people I know, I do not tell people to "Stay away from that Linux crap and its psychotic zealots", but niether do I tell people that Linux is all that great, in my personal experience it is not (I hate unix, all flavors, but that's me).
How many more people would be using Linux today if the respomce to newbies was along the lines of "the solution is X" rather than "RTFM, you f*cking moron!"?
Understand that I did get helpfull replies to my questions and I did get people telling me how to make Linix easier for me to use, but for every positive responce I got I recieved at least three repsonces telling me I was an idiot.
So I've given up on Linux and moved to Be. At least the BeOS community is helpful.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Part of the problem is that discussions on /. can tend to hysteria, causing authors to be bombarded with flames. So, Rob, why not simply drop such items, since other places are doing better jobs, and concentrate on what /. does best -- amusing and interesting stuff that's off the beaten path? Discussions of technical topics on Slashdot are still often quite good, modulo the occasional flamewar over GNOME/KDE or Linux/*BSD.
This "us versus them" mentality is strengthened by wave after wave of attack and retaliation. So when those from outside the "battlefield" try to bring actual points of rational discussion into the fray, the "dogs of war" rush to attack thinking the newcomer is just another member of the "other side."
The simple solution is simply not to get so attached. Does someone say "Linux sux!"? Ignore it. Does someone say the "UI sux!"? Ask how it could be improved. If their entire argument boils down to "It sux becuz it's not Windows!", no one will take it seriously. But if even the stupidest complaint is seen as a suggestion dropped into the collective suggestion box, maybe people we'll see the open source community is working to help everybody, and not working against them.
IMHO
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
One thing I hope people learn is that being a "flaming weenie" when you are actually in Industry is a serious career retardent.
In about 1994, which was at the height of the TeamOS/2 stuff, I was doing a series of telephone interviews for a system admin position. (We were acting as middlemen for customer that was part NetWare and part Windows NT).
You wouldn't belive the number of people that would tell us that we shouldn't use NT (like it was our decision) and evangalize OS/2 and use words like "Microshaft". And these were people who supposedly wanted the job. One guy even kept calling back to figure out why we didn't pick him! (The NetWare guys were all very professional, however.)
Everyone knows it's fun to flame away on the Internet and act like a general ass because nobody really knows who you are. It's when these people actually start taking it serious enough that it affecting their "real life", you have to worry. I haven't run into a raving Linux Nut in real life yet, but it's probably going to happen soon.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Flames per second! We can top any commercial OS out there. What a way to harness the talent of the AC community ;)
--Shoeboy
A lot of people say stuff like this, and it doesn't seem to make any difference. I doubt the people who sent the flames actually read this entire piece. Or maybe they did and thought "That's not me" or "That's stupid". So, did anyone here send one of the nasty emails to Mindcraft or the guy at Andover news? Anyone want to fess up to it? Have you changed your mind?
Somehow it all just seems like preaching to the choir.
I use Linux, and I love it. However, at the same time, I run multiple other OSes. I currently run Red Hat Linux 5.2 and 6.0, Debian GNU/Linux 2.1, and Slackware Linux 3.6 and 4.0. I also run Solaris 7, FreeBSD 3.6, and BeOS r4.0.
Why do I run all of these? A few reasons. To name a few:
1) I am interested in OSes in general
2) These OSes in particular interest me
3) All of these OSes are suited to certain tasks.
The third of these reasons is a very important - and oft ignored - fact. If you read the Linux Advocacy HOWTO, there are three lines that I feel are the most important:
I am so very tired of people who are unwilling to admit that Linux is NOT the only choice out there. So many of these people came to Linux because they resented the lack of choice forced upon them in the Microsoft driven world of computers... and yet now, they seek to take the freedom which they sought out and found from those who seek it as well.
Mutual respect for each others' personal choices is something severely lacking in this community. I choose to run Red Hat. Why should this matter to anybody but myself? And yet, to many it does. Then again, I choose to run Debian and Slackware as well. I even choose to run (horror of horrors) a commercial os: BeOS. Why? Because I like it, and it does what I want it to do. Will it ever replace Linux ? Most likely not. Will Linux ever take over the niche that it fills ? I don't know. It is questionable at best. But for the time being, BeOS does what I need it to do, and that is all that matters.
Linux is NOT the be-all and end-all. BeOS is NOT the be-all and end-all. Solaris is NOT the be-all and end-all. FreeBSD is NOT the be-all and end-all. OpenBSD is NOT the be-all and end-all. NetBSD is NOT the be-all and end-all.
Do you see a pattern here?
No OS is the be-all and end-all. At least not for all users. Sure, Linux may do everything you need to do, and if it does, great. Use Linux for everything then. But this community needs to realize and acknowledge that as human beings are individuals, they in turn have individual needs and wants. Freedom of choice is one of the most basic freedoms. Without the freedom to choose, many things which all of us take for granted, Linux being nowhere near the most important, would not exist.
Don't take that freedom away.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
These aren't slaggings-off on Slashdot. These are written by people who are reading the linked-to articles and then emailing the author direct with abuse. And yes, the Astroturf theory has occurred to me, but frankly, I _really_ doubt that MS is paying a bunch of people to do this for them when it's blindingly obvious that we have plenty of people who are quite happy to do this off their own bat.
In addition, although being selective with your news and hitting LWN, Slashdot, Linux Today, linux.com and so on is very common, there are a _lot_ of people who really, honestly, truly, haven't heard of Linux, haven't heard of BeOS, haven't heard of *BSD. If they read introductory articles, take part in discussions, or subscribe to comp.os.linux.* and the first things they see are some of the more.. er.. intolerant articles: yes, they _will_ assume that's typical of the Linux (/BeOS/*BSD/whatever their new interest is) community. Especially if they see nothing done to stop it. If my mates tell me there's a cool new nightclub in town and we go there, and people keep spilling my drink or fights keep breaking out, I might listen to them say "Oh, really cool folks come here, and the music is well cool." But I will certainly be influenced by the fact that the drink-spiller doesn't offer to buy me a new one, and no bouncers show up to stop a fight, and it's most unlikely I'll be convinced to go again.
Guess what: immature people abound everywhere, in every community. If people take the "Mindcraft is the spawn of the Devil!" type comments as evidence against supporting Linux, it seems to me that they just need an excuse of some sort. Those of you here who use Linux: do the "Linux sux freeBSD rulz" idiots make freeBSD any more or less attractive in your eyes? Come on!
Slashdot is an open arena, not a closed magazine. There will always be idiotic posters, and there will always be embarassing, misguided, inflamatory comments. This reflects no worse on Linux than the people who stand in line for a month and dress in Chewbaca costumes reflect on the Star Wars saga. There will be idiotic zealots everywhere (my apologies to the Chewbaca people). Live with it.
No sig.